If you’ve suffered from depression, you know how debilitating it can be, especially when it comes out of nowhere. If you’ve gone through depression, and come out the other end, it’s such a relief to finally feel better. But what can you do when depression comes out of nowhere? The hopelessness and helplessness you already feel, can start to feel even worse.
Depression makes you feel like giving up, like nothing matters anymore. Especially when you’ve already been through it before. If you have depression that lasts at least two weeks, and then goes away, and then comes back again for two weeks or more, this can be a sign of a more serious depression that needs to be addressed.
You might feel like you are slogging through each day. Things are fine, but not great. You may have a constant low level depression. It has lasted so long that it just feels normal. You may be so used to it that you don’t realize that you could be feeling depressed and that you can do something about it until it takes a turn for the worse.
Symptoms of depression include tearfulness, irritability, emptiness, worthlessness, poor hygiene, not taking care of yourself, insomnia, weight gain or loss, feeling slowed down or restlessness, inability to concentrate, recurrent thoughts of death and loss of interest in previously enjoyable activities.
Depression can negatively affect your day-to-day functioning at work, school, and socially. Are you isolated and not getting anything done?
If there is no apparent reason for your depression, for example the loss of a loved one, losses from a natural disaster, or a serious medical illness, then you may need to get some professional help to figure out what is going on.
When Depression Comes Out Of Nowhere But Seems To Have Been Triggered By Old Memories
A professional will know what questions to ask you to try to determine what is happening. We work together to find out what was going on in your life when you first felt the depression return.
Maybe something that happened in your life triggered, or caused you to remember, a difficult time in your past. Depression can come up without you being conscious of where the root of it is. We naturally associate the depressed feelings with our present day life, and then rack our brains for what could be wrong with our work, relationships, the list goes on.
The reality is, maybe only one quarter of the intensity of the feeling has to do with our life in the present. The other three quarters of the feeling has something to do with the past.
Whenever a feeling seems too intense, that is the first clue that we may be dealing with something that has roots in the past. You may even be wondering why this is so intense, and feeling like this should be much easier than it is.
In other words, the memory comes up as a feeling, such as helpless and hopeless. It is a feeling memory. The only thing we remember at the moment is the feeling, not the event or events that went along with it. This is common of things that happened when we were very young.
We may need to target those memories using EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR desensitizes you so you aren’t triggered and don’t have such intense feelings. EMDR is a great way to uncover and resolve things from your past that are getting in the way of living a happy, productive life.
Using Neurofeedback To Help Heal Depression That Comes Out of Nowhere By Working Directly With Your Brain
Neurofeedback is another way to help heal depression. We can directly target parts of the brain to help you feel more positive. For example, the right frontal lobe of the brain calms emotional misery such as despair and anger. Neurofeedback can get to the core problem of very low self-worth through stabilizing the right frontal cortex of the brain.
The right back of the brain is targeted to make you more aware of and calm your body, reducing physical agitation. This helps reduce self-injurious behavior and also improve self-care. It helps you feel more grounded and relaxed. You can start to feel more connected to yourself and more positive.
How When Depression Comes Out of Nowhere You Might Resort To Dissociation In Order To Cope
Neurofeedback stabilizes your mood and also helps you heal from dissociation. Dissociation is a mental process where a person disconnects or detaches from their thoughts, feelings, memories or sense of identity. It is an important coping mechanism that the mind can employ to deal with intensely stressful or traumatic events. It is actually a survival mechanism that is automatically triggered to help tolerate or minimize stress. For many people, dissociation doesn’t have to be catastrophic, in fact it can run from mild to severe.
If you feel too hopeless and are full of despair, you can automatically dissociate. Some people do this so much that they are always feeling shut down, and dull. Feeling like you are not involved in life, numb and disconnected can be an unhappy way to go through life. Friends and family may notice that you just don’t seem to feel empathy or love.
Being detached can seriously affect your relationships. It makes it very difficult to feel excited and happy about your life. Neurofeedback can help you feel more in touch and connected to yourself and those around you.
When depression comes out of nowhere, taking action can be difficult. Especially since one symptom of depression is to have difficulty getting things done and moving forward. That is all the more reason to push yourself to get some help. We can explore which therapies might be best for you, neurofeedback, EMDR or talk therapy.
If you feel that you can use some help, I invite you to give me a call at 310-314-6933 and leave me a confidential voice message. You can also email me at mfoxmft@yahoo.com.
